Notre-Dame Paris

The cathedral on the other side of the river

Notre-Dame stands on the Île de la Cité, in the 4th arrondissement, but its forecourt looks straight across the Petit-Pont to the Latin Quarter, and that is why this guide sits on the Left Bank. The building reopened to the public in December 2024, nearly five years and eight months after the fire. The official site describes it as a place of prayer open to all, freely and without charge, for 860 years; the 2026 visit keeps to that.

Photo: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Before you go: what the visit involves

• The nave. Free and open every day. The recommended free booking is made on the official site only.
• The towers. A separate visit, run by the Centre des monuments nationaux: 424 steps up to 69 metres, at a fixed time, with a named ticket. It has its own slot and its own ticket, separate from the cathedral.
• The Treasury. Paid at its own counter, with no online sale; on Thursdays it stays open until 8.30 p.m.
• The archaeological crypt. Under the forecourt at 7 place Jean-Paul II, it shows the remains of the Île de la Cité. It is closed on Mondays and is not accessible to visitors with reduced mobility.
• Rules at the door. According to the official visitor information, suitcases, scooters, food and telephones stay out of the building.

Photo: Ibex73, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Getting there while line 4 is cut

The closure of Saint-Michel on line 4, from 14 September to 19 December 2026, lies five minutes’ walk from the forecourt. Use Cité on the same line, the RER B or C at Saint-Michel Notre-Dame, or Hôtel de Ville, as the City of Paris advises. On the Left Bank stand the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, about 120 metres from the forecourt, the bouquinistes along the quays, the church of Saint-Séverin and the rue de la Huchette.

What to look at

The west front is the part most visitors read first. It has three portals, dedicated to the Last Judgment, the Virgin and Saint Anne, according to Wikipedia. Inside, the nave is 128 metres long and 48 metres wide, by the same source, and the three great rose windows date from the thirteenth century: the west rose was completed in 1220, the north rose built in 1250 to 1260 and the south rose completed in 1270. The flying buttresses along the sides are those of the fourteenth century, which replaced the first ones with a reach of 15 metres between wall and counter-support. The great organ, built by François Thierry in the eighteenth century and now with more than 8,000 pipes, survived the fire but was damaged by water.

A fixed point of the building below ground is the pillar of the Boatmen, a Gallo-Roman monument discovered under the cathedral in 1710. The nineteenth-century spire, added in the restoration directed by Viollet-le-Duc from 1845 to 1867, was destroyed in the fire of 2019 together with the whole roof of the nave, choir and transept.

The fire and the reopening, in dates

• 1163. Construction begins under Bishop Maurice de Sully and ends around 1345.
• 1845 to 1867. Viollet-le-Duc directs the major restoration that adds the spire.
• 15 April 2019. The fire starts at 6.18 p.m., and the spire falls at 7.50 p.m., according to Wikipedia.
• 7 December 2024. The official reopening ceremony; the public follows the next day.
• 13 December 2024. The Crown of Thorns, deposited by Saint Louis, returns to the cathedral.

Wikipedia puts the reconstruction at three years, from 2021 to 2024. The official site is the place to check anything that changes, such as the schedule of masses.

Choosing your moment

Before the fire, Notre-Dame received between 12 and 14 million people a year, depending on whether one reads the English or the French Wikipedia article. The free online booking, which opens a few hours before the visit, is therefore the practical tool: the official site recommends it for people already in Paris, and entry without it remains possible with a longer wait. For a visit that includes the towers, book the slot first, since the towers cannot be entered without one, and build the rest of the day around it.

Two features of the timetable help planning. On Thursdays the cathedral stays open until 10 p.m. and the Treasury until 8.30 p.m., against 7 p.m. and 6 p.m. on the other weekdays. On Sundays the Treasury opens only from 1 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. The hours come from archived copies of the official site dated May to August 2026, so check them on the day.

Combining Notre-Dame with other visits

Distances are measured as the crow flies from the cathedral’s coordinates in our data, and walking times follow the site’s method (direct distance × 1.3 at 80 metres a minute).

• Shakespeare and Company: 139 metres, about 2 minutes.
• Rue de la Huchette: 236 metres, about 4 minutes.
• Saint-Séverin church: 309 metres, about 5 minutes.
• Cluny Museum: 497 metres, about 8 minutes.
• Sorbonne: 502 metres, about 8 minutes.
• Saint-Étienne-du-Mont: 705 metres, about 11 minutes.
• Institut du Monde Arabe: 749 metres, about 12 minutes.
• Panthéon: 818 metres, about 13 minutes.

The nearby quays are described in our guide to the bouquinistes.

Sleeping near the forecourt

The hotels in the section below are the ones of our base closest to the forecourt, measured in a straight line. For the longer comparison, see our list of hotels near Notre-Dame; for the district as a whole, start from the Latin Quarter guide.

Photo: Celette, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons